For the second time this year, one of our active fighter jets has crashed landed in a practice run, and thankfully the pilot survived the incident. It is very important that we replace our current fleet of fighter jets. How much do we spend annually on maintenance of our current fleet? Ironically that is never reported in the media when journalists complain about projected maintenance costs for the rest of our fleet.
We need to buy new fighter jets.
I agree the DND needs to do a better job on the cost to keep the aging equipment in service.
ReplyDeleteIt could be used to highlight the cost savings benefit of extending the air frames, ships, tanks etc.
We should buy some of those Russian birds... Designed with our climate in mind and designed for patrolling over vast wilderness. Some of those SUs really look cool! And get that head mount thing too
ReplyDeleteRussian Jets? As an old "Cold Warrior" that just sends shivers down my spine, I don't trust them.
ReplyDeleteAt least the Yanks or the EU (should we buy Eurofighters, or the Saab Gripen, both of which are sterling birds) would be reliable sources of spares for our fleet as needed, being our longstanding allies.
And to once again did up a 50 year old skeleton, we should be building our own, we did at onetime, and we surely could do it again if we had the will.
As for the oost of maintaining equipment, I don't know what they are for the Hornet, but when I was on CF-104s (Starfighters), it was something like 200 manhours for each flighthour.
The key problem is an out of control bureaucracy which adds time and expense to every military purchase.
ReplyDeleteConsider, in the Second World War military technology progressed from fabric covered aircraft to jet planes approaching the speed of sound, and from rifle calibre machine guns to guided missiles. At this time, engineers drew plans with pen and paper, and computer was a job description.
The Skunkworks was able to create the F-117 "Nighthawk" in about 31 months at a cost of about $50 milion/plane; another example of how an unconstrained entity "could" create high performance aircraft (and oddly, they created about the same number of Nighthawks as the CF is considering for the next generation fighter fleet.)
If we were able to eliminate these bad management practices (and rewarding the companies which feed off this) the price of these planes and the time to get them in service would come down considerably.